1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to devices used to distribute fluent material, and more particularly to a device that divides a material flowing from a single source or a small number of sources into a plurality of streams of substantially equal volumetric flow rate.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is desirable in food processing applications to slice ground sausage rapidly and deposit the sausage on a moving substrate, such as a conveyor belt, beneath the slicing machine. Sausage is commonly made in specialized sausage-making machines that are known in the food processing industry. These machines, and machines that are made to pump previously-ground sausage, produce a stream of ground sausage that is fluent enough to be conveyed as a fluid, but which contains solids and semi-solids, and therefore it cannot be treated as a homogeneous material. Because of the heterogeneity of raw sausage, and the difficulty of conveying such a material conventionally, sausage is often placed in food slicing machines in batches of frozen or semi-frozen logs of a predetermined volume.
In order to produce ground sliced sausage patties rapidly enough to be economically feasible, a machine must not only slice the sausage rapidly, but it must slice the sausage in each of a plurality of lanes that are aligned above and across the moving substrate. These lanes must produce uniform slices, which requires that conditions be uniform in each lane. However, a batch process is particularly inefficient and susceptible to contamination due to the time and cost of producing chilled logs of product and the handling of such logs by personnel. Furthermore, when a slicing machine has several lanes slicing ground sausage in a batch process, there is inefficiency introduced in the form of lost time during refilling, and loss of material at the beginning and end of each log.
It is desirable to have a device that facilitates the use of a continuous process rather than a batch process in order to eliminate the inefficiencies inherent in a batch process, to minimize potential contamination, and to avoid the inconsistencies inherent in batch processes. However, in order to obtain consistent slice characteristics in each of the lanes, any device that conveys sausage to the plurality of lanes must supply the sausage at a volumetric flow rate that is equal in each lane. Equal volumetric flow rate has only been possible conventionally using. the batch process, because it has been impossible before the present invention to convey a heterogeneous material such as raw sausage in a plurality of flowing streams of equal volumetric flow rates.